A little earlier this month, we shared a rumor with you that Google might be thinking of giving users more control over how apps interact with Android, granting you the ability to pick and choose which permissions you wanted an app to have, rather than granting them in an all-or-nothing situation. Some of you mentioned in the comments about how CyanogenMod used to do this, but removed the feature. As luck would have it, project leader Steve Kondik took to Google+ this afternoon to not only discuss that issue, but the larger scope of security and privacy issues affecting Android.

Kondik recounts the struggles that old CM system faced – apps would crash if certain permissions were flat-out blocked, so they started delivering fake garbage data, instead of just denying access attempts outright. Problem was, that seriously cheesed-off developers, who built their apps expecting Android to return nice, clean data.

In the end, Kondik’s stance is that CM should support the development community, and claims the kind of work-arounds CM7 was pulling don’t really fix anything in the first place – the problem is malicious apps and the users who run them, not the framework that lets the apps do malicious things. We’re not sure we totally buy that reasoning, but it’s a moot point – the feature is dead for CM.

That said, Kondik wants to keep CM secure, as well as give users new options for protecting their privacy. He’s open to hearing suggestions from users, so if you’ve got something to say about how you’d like to see future CM releases address these issues, click-on through that source link and share your thoughts.